Ethical Palette - Why Our Food Choices Matter.docx

Ethical Palette - Why our food choices matter A walk on the pavement across KFC is quite an event. One would literally be seduced by the smell wafting out of the outlet. As if that isn’t enough, the advertisement just lures you to just take a bite. The real intrigue is, how do they serve at all the outlets with such consistency and uniformity, seldom interrupted?

They

have

achieved

this

by

standardisation

and

systematisation of production as a result of caging and force feeding chicks and allegations of anti-biotics abuse. Similarly the milk and meat industry is also rife with allegations of forced weaning and castration apart from caging and anti-biotic abuse. The demand for exotic foods such as shark fin soups, manta meat etc has led to indiscriminate and merciless killing and maiming of animals to extinction. While most are unaware others choose to continue licking fingers just because their palette seeks them. One has to realize that by consuming such products, the cruel practices are being promoted and rewarded. We usually don’t think of what we eat as a matter of ethics. Stealing, lying, hurting people happen to be relevant for our moral character. Today the ethical

consumerism

movement

is

gaining

traction.

The

underlying

philosophy is that when one consumes, it is not just the product he consumes but also the process involved production. In essence by choosing one particular product over another, one subscribes or tacitly approves the values embodied in the process of manufacture of the products. To think of ethics of what we eat as a new thing would be wrong. Many indigenous hunter gatherers and tribes have elaborate codes which, both, sanctions and prohibits which animals to kill and when. Some even have rituals whereby they ask for forgiveness of the animals for killing them. This has a reflection in major religions world over where food habits are strictly regulated by moral codes. Today with globalisation, transport revolution and modern technological applications in food processing, access to all varieties

of foods both

domestic and exotic in almost all seasons has led to empowering people with

the availability of choices in diet. Several ethical consumer movements have led to change in the consumer pattern which in turn has made the producers to change the process of production. We see an increasing trend of people moving to vegetarianism and veganism due to both health and ethical reasons. The increasing demand for GMO free foods, organic foods, free range poultry and dairy products are cases in point. In terms of impact on our planet, no other human activity comes even remotely closer to agriculture. Apart from being consumers of food, we are also affected by pollution associated with food production and consumption. Food choices not just affect humans, but also billions of non-Homo sapiens animal species. For many of those animals, our choices control almost every aspect of their earthly existence -being born and reared in completely artificial food factories, sexually deprived and then slaughtered mercilessly en masse. All of this has been made possible because of our food choices. Virtually anyone, irrespective of income, can make a positive contribution to this ethical consumer movement. To make better food choices one doesn’t have to spend hours reading labels or rigidly adhere to any particular diet. With the world of information at our fingertips, it takes only few minutes of surfing to dispel ignorance and make informed choices. Our choices, in all certainty, would make this world a better place to live in.